NL MVP: Prince FielderWhy: Because he's the new Ryan Howard.NL Cy: Jake PeavyWhy: Because he was so due for this.NL Rookie: Ryan BraunWhy: Because he's Jewish only 160 AB into it.NL Manager: Ned YostWhy: Because the Brewers are in 1st.

Use the comments section to weigh in with your selections. Extra credit for inspired unconventional picks (but don't forget to back 'em up).

Finally, a special category worthy of our daily routine: Biggest AL Dud and Biggest NL Dud. (We'll presume that "MVP" is a proxy for "Stud.") I leave that one up to you -- fans' choice.

MLB All-Star Home Run Derby: The group is one of the more compelling in years: Defending champ Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols (which is totally exciting), Prince Fielder, Alex Rios, and a trio of AL MVPs: Vlad Guerrero (2004), Justin Morneau (2006), Magglio Ordonez (2007?!). My pick: Prince Fielder, the new Ryan Howard.

The hottest team in baseball: The Tigers, who have won 5 straight (including a weekend sweep of the Red Sox) and 14 of 19, to move into first place in the brutally tough AL Central. The defending AL champs were no one-season wonder.

Mark Buehrle is staying with the White Sox: 4 years, $56 million. Quite the opposite of "imminent trade," isn't it?

NBA Summer: What you missed this weekend... In two games, Greg Oden has picked up the same number of fouls (19) as points... Kevin Durant is off to only a slightly better start (5-of-17 FG shooting against Summer League D)... Yi Watch: In last night's win for Team China, he got 20 points the hard way – 3/11 FG, 14/17 FT... Marco Belinelli is the early break-out star of the summer, with his 37-point debut... Javaris Crittenton is legit, too (18 points on 8/13 FG shooting last night)... Al Thornton joins the headliner list of rookie sensations, scoring 24 in his Summer League debut for the Clippers.

Tiger's Golf Tournament: KJ Choi wins it. But it was more significant for what it meant to Tiger in his ability to create his own PGA-type event. Or will that be... events?

Wimbledon: Federer wins 5th straight Wimby title. The problem is: This was such a done-deal from the get-go that you didn't need to watch the entire tournament, let alone the final. He's simply the best ever. (Chris gets "First Comment!" privileges and weighs in with a good point. I didn't mean to suggest the final itself was a "done deal" -- just that Federer winning yet another Wimbledon title was.)

Tour de France: Sprint specialist Robbie McEwen finished first in the first stage. McEwen is one of those rider names you always heard about during the Lance Era as "If only Lance wasn't competing." Which means the positive drug test should be happening any minute now.

TV: "The Bronx is Burning," Part 1 tonight on ESPN after the HR Derby. Haven't seen the show, but I'm a fan of both John Turturro (playing Billy Martin) and Daniel Sunjata (playing Reggie Jackson). Here's what I know: Jonathan Mahler's book that the miniseries is based on is phenomenal and a terrific summer read. (Disclosure: Mahler graciously participated in my reading series last summer.)

63 comments:

If you didn't bother to watch the Wimbledon final, you missed an absolute classic, and a match that was certainly not a 'done deal'. Nadal pushed Federer all the way, and even the final set, which looks comfortable on paper at 6-2, was a tense one, with Federer fighting off multiple break points in two of his four service games.

If you were introducing a visitor from Mars to tennis, or to sport in general, you'd show them yesterday's match to give them a true impression of the power, athleticism, subtlety and passion that it can inspire.

I wonder how much Nadal's knee was bothering him. I thought he was going to pull that match out and I was really hoping he would. Tennis is so much more exciting when there are a couple of guys at top who can win all the majors.

Nice to see the Tigers rolling heading into the break. 3 game sweep of the Sox was pretty huge.

I'll have to disagree that the Yankees were the biggest AL Dud. With the aging of their roster and their questions about their pitching woes going on into the season, this could have been easily predicted.

I think the White Sox can be the biggest dud so far. Sporadic offense, poor defense, injuries, and a disappearing bullpen has them at 13 games behind in the central currently. This is a team still loaded with talent that is seriously underperforming. At least they resigned Buerhle much to the media's disappointment. He would be in the thick of the AL Cy Young race if his team could give him some damn run support.

While I admire your determination to cover the TDF; your comments so far are of an ill-informed and negative nature. I realize this is typical of a non-cycling fan so I politely request that you either put more effort into researching both the sport and the race, or refrain from commenting and pushing the dialogue further into the reactionary negative.

Allow me to join in the piling on with regard to the Wimbledon comment. That was easily one of the most thrilling matches I've ever seen (probably THE most), and I can't believe all you have to say about it generally is that Federer's dominance is somehow boring/routine. Did even you watch any of it? That was an absolute battle, and if you think it would somehow have been more compelling or worth watching without Federer winning or going for five in a row, you're nuts!

I'm looking forward to the Derby, here's hoping the job doesn't keep me too late tonight. You're right, it's a great line-up...but you're wrong to be putting so much (read: any) stock in two SUMMER LEAGUE games!

While it's defeinitely a great time to talk baseball with the half way point and all, I really hope that the whole SI/Fanhouse/theft incident doesn't just get blown over. The 'sphere should definitely take this lull in sports to keep pushing the subject as it's obviously not going to be brought up by the MSM. Great post by Ufford...

NL CY Young - I think someone getting lost in the argument is Aaron Harang. If not for Cincy's woeful bullpen yesterday (David Weathers, I'm looking right at you), Harang would've been 10-2 at the break. He's third in IP, and strikeouts. While his ERA of 3.67 is not as gaudy as Peavy's, some consideration ought to be made for the fact that his home park is a bandbox, basically Coors Field East.

NL Rookie has to be hinter Pence. First he's currently leading the NL in batting average. Now is batting average a stupid stat? Yes. Is his average slightly inflated by playing at Minute Maid Park? Yes. Is this still impressive? Of course. He also has a .956 OPS and a 146 (park adjusted) OPS+ (8th in NL). Not only that but he has been phenomenal defensively in Minute Maid Park's weird center field and has been quick to adapt to the strange hill thing on their.

The Federer/Nadal Wimbledon final was the best tennis match I've seen in a long time. I just hope it wasn't decided by Nadal's knee being hurt. It didn't look like it bothered him on most groundstrokes, but his serve definitely dropped off in the 5th set.

Still Dan, your comment was extremely wrong on this one. I try not to call you out on too much, but you were way off on this. It may have seemed like Federer would cruise, but he definitely did not have an easy time in the Finals. There were definite moments where I felt sure that Roger would lose the match to Nadal, especially after Federer got extremely flustered with the Hawkeye. Sportscenter did not do this match any sort of justice whatsoever if you think this wasn't drama filled or a foregone conclusion.

Wimbledon final was great. I can't believe Nadal blew the last set though. I was looking forward to the no tie break in the 5th set rule.

Did anyone notice that they have only named 7 guys to the Derby? The NL might do well with Pujols but I'm not sure about Howard and Fielder this year. I don't think Fielder fits and Howard hasn't been the same. The AL easily has the edge because Vlad is crazy and Morneau/Maggs are a huge question mark in a good way. Rios is a question mark in a question mark kind of way though...

Although, there is no way it was the best I've ever seen. Granted, there were a ton of awesome break opportunities, net shots, and diving plays, but there have been other thrilling matches before.

It also filled the Sunday wake-up void without a Golf major, Fall baseball, or Football in the line-up. Federer said it best when he mentioned that he's happy to be winning right now, and will take it, because it likely won't last for long.

Seriously, Nadal is getting a lot better. Tough to compare him to Lefty, because of the different sports, but for viewing purposes, it's close.

Does Nadal not play well on hard courts? It seems like the only times he is relevant is clay and now grass. I don't really know the difference except I assume that speed of ball is affected greatly.

I will say that I couldn't take my eyes away from the tv when I turned the match on at the beginning of the third set. I don't think I can get excited for non federer nadal matches but that was the most exciting sports I have seen since Lebron in the Eastern Conference finals.

Dan, what exactly do you mean by being an "OPS snob"? Do you mean you use OPS as your metric of evaluating hitters? Because A-Rod's OPS is higher than Magglio's. Do you mean you don't use OPS at all, and instead use stuff like batting average? Then you're a moron. A-Rod leads Magglio in basically every single category except for OBP and doubles, including a 30-13 edge in homers.

@ Lawdog: Uh...care to explain why exactly Adam Dunn kills the Reds? His OPS is .905, second-best on the team and 26th in all of baseball. I'd say he's much more underrated than overrated.

Federer was amazing in the fifth set...I don't know what happened to him, but he just turned it up to another level. It didn't look to me like Nadal's knee really bothered him much in the fifth set (he was having trouble in the end of the fourth), but I wouldn't really know much about it.

Shanoff, clearly, you have never watched a single Milwaukee Brewers game if you think Ned Yost should be the Manager of the 1st half. As a Brewers fan that has watched the majority of games, it is pretty obvious to diehard Crew fans that he has probably cost the Crew at least 10 wins with his bullpen and lineup decisions.

Yes, he's managing the biggest turnaround in the league thus far, but by no means is this due to Ned Yost's game managing. He might be worse than Grady Little in the '03 playoffs with his pitching decisions.

If you want a good example of this, look at the scoring recap of last weekend's Nationals series, the previous weekend's Cubs series, and especially the late-inning comeback game in Minnesota in which he left his worst right handed reliever (Chris Spurling) in in the 9th to face Justin Morneau when he could have used lefty specialist Ben Shouse or the virtually unhittable Francisco Cordero against the opposing team's best hitter.

I don't see how ARod can be an MVP for "carrying" a team to an under .500 record. Uh, great. Congrats... you led your team to the middle of the pack. So without him they would be even more mediocre. Big deal.

I think we all realize that. The reality is that people care about the NBA summer league because people want to see the guy from China put in a game winner. They want to know how Oden/Durant are dealing with NBA-sized defenses. They want to know if Marco Balenelli is the next great European player.

DanI must agree with Jeff, and I will tell you why. While Robbie McEwen is a very good cyclist, he is a sprinter by trade, and as such would never be in contention with Lance. Sprinters get all their glory in the first week of the TDF, and they only compete for the Green Jersey (points based on sprints both during a stage, and at the end). If you tuned in to just one stage of the Tour, you would probably get this information as the commentators do a great job of getting that information out each day it seems.

I would suggest you do tune in at some point, but I would wait for the mountains if I were you, that's when things get really interesting! Try to make time on July 25 (Stage 16, which features 4 climbs) and tune in to either the live coverage, or the recap. It's great to have it on while doing other tasks because you don't have to watch it too closely.

The Bronx is Burning may have a little problem. TWWL has only scheduled two hours (8-10) for the HR Derby and if I remember correctly, last year it went well past 11:00. My point is this -- how can I effectively TiVo something that doesn't have a hard starting time?

There's zippy chance that me or my Yankee-fan GF are going to stay up to watch it. They should have put it up on Tuesday night at 10 instead of showing Bruno vs Lennox from 1993.

Thanks to all who saved me correcting Dan about his Robbie McEwen comment. Riders specialize in different events. McEwen is a sprinter who is never going to finish within two hours of the winner's time. What is kind of unique about McEwen is his size. He is 5'7" and about 149 lbs. Most of the sprinters are much bigger and can generate incredible power for short distances. McEwen despite being physically smaller has such a fast kick that he can speed by the bigger guys. He started as a BMX racer in Australia and is renowned for being able to find just the right position in the pack.

Yesterday was one of the more amazing sprints. He crashed with 23km to go and his wrist and knee were hurt. His teammates helped pace him back to the group by letting him draft off of them. They rejoined the group but there are 189 riders in the tour all riding in one pack strung out from side to side across the road. The camera showing the sprint only had about the front 10 riders in view and Robbie was nowhere to be seen. He shot out of nowhere and blew by the other top sprinters in the world to take the win easily.

Does anyone buy for a second that Barry Bonds won't be in the home run derby.

Let's see if I get this right...1. Miguel Cabrera is hurt and can't do it.2. They haven't named a replacement.3. It is the day of the derby.4. Bonds said he won't do it.5. It's in San Fran.6. We know he will be there.7. Everyone wants to see him.

one more tennis note: i have to say that one of the reasons i really enjoyed men's final yesterday was that both players were pretty classy. there were moments of negative emotion and annoyance, to be sure, but on the whole they were both gracious winners/losers and that's nice to see from two people at the top of their game.

To add something else about the Wimbledon match, what perhaps made it the most interesting was that it finally looked like someone was going to beat Federer... it looked like Nadal was actually going to beat Federer on grass.

This got me thinking, in that even when Pete was at his absolute peak, anytime he played Andre (even at Wimbledon), you always thought that Andre had a chance. With Federer, the sentiment was more with what Dan incorrectly presumed, that Federer's winning was a foregone conclusion.

Based on yesterday, I think it's a lot more likely that Nadal will catch Federer on other surfaces before Federer could beat Nadal at Roland Garros.

AL MVP: MaggsAL CY: Beckett- over Haren b/c of standingsAL ROY: Daisuke- by definition, he's a rookie and I think Young is hurt by playing in Tampa.AL MOY: Leyland- could have had a 2006 hangover, but still cruising.

NL MVP: PrinceNL Cy: Peavy and Chris Young sort of cancel each other so I give it to SheetsNL ROY: Pence.NL MOY: Give Arizona's Melvin some love working with that young lineup (I like managers that do more with less).

A player shall be considered a rookie unless, during a previous season or seasons, he has (a) exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues; or (b) accumulated more than 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club or clubs during the period of 25-player limit (excluding time in the military service and time on the disabled list).

Todd, how is JD Drew/Eric Hinske not your RF dud? Ohhh thats right, because they play for your team. Drew is batting 25 points under last years average and 107 points under last years OBP. Meanwhile Hinske's batting a cool .193. Sure Abreu's not having the greatest season of his career, but he only batted .277 last year. So his current .264 is only 13 points under it.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.